The Facebook Pixel Explained: How to Use Ad Retargeting for Real Estate Lead Generation

This post is brought to you by Placester

Do you already have a real estate Facebook marketing strategy? Then you’re in very good shape for this year and beyond, given the social network continues to evolve in terms of usefulness for brands and professionals of all kinds.

Now, it’s time to advance your approach on the beloved social channel. Organic shares in the form of links to new listings pages, open house promotion, and company updates are all fine for branding and growing website traffic … but advertising is where you’ll find the real estate lead generation gold.

Find out how you can use the Facebook Pixel to develop retargeted ad campaigns that reach your core buyer personas on the social platform and turn those users into leads using our tips and tricks below.

After all, without knowing how to set up ads, the Pixel will be worthless for your firm.

Here are all of the different ad-related services Facebook provides businesses that can help your real estate agency excel online:

Business Page: You’re already well aware this is a chief component of your marketing strategy on the social network, but it’s nonetheless a key facet of your Facebook promotional efforts. This page is free of charge and allows you to bolster your organic presence on the platform. In other words, you need a Business Page first and foremost to begin thriving on Facebook.

Facebook ads: Single-image, carousel, video, slideshow — there are quite a few advertising avenues you can take once you head onto the Facebook superhighway, and each offers its own unique benefits. The point of having so many options available, though, is no single ad type works perfectly for every brand.

Audience Network: This relatively new tool allows brands get their Facebook ads shown elsewhere on the web, meaning they can reap more rewards with only half the effort. Ads will appear on select websites that are part of said network, broadening reach. This may take a while to be ready for real estate professionals such as yourself, but it’s still a feature to keep an eye on.

There are certainly other ad programs you ought to learn more about, but these are arguably the most popular and widely used Facebook advertising tools.

The point is this, though: Sign up for Facebook for Business, then take the grand tour of the entire offering so you can determine which ad programs to experiment with first for your agency.

Learn all of the ins and outs of the Facebook Pixel.

The most tried-and-true of Facebook ad campaigns are the ones that not only reach the right audience, but follow that audience around online. Allow us to elaborate.

Step #1: You get more could-be clients on your website.

Let’s say someone lands on your website — hooray! They’re on the lookout for a bright, knowledgeable agent, but they need to research you. They leave your site to continue their search for the numero uno agent in their market. Bummer, we know.

As you’ve hopefully already done by this point, just keep on crafting enticing real estate ads on the social network that appeal to your niche buyer person(s). We explain this entire process in far more detail in our exclusive Facebook real estate lead generation ebook for agents, but this is essentially how the Pixel can elevate your already-strong advertising game and get you more leads in a matter of days.

Implement the Facebook Pixel on your website.

Now that you have a solid understanding of how the Facebook Pixel can help, the next step to utilizing the online advertising resource is to do one, simple thing: Add the Pixel code to your real estate website.

Facebook does a pretty good job outlining the main steps to implementing this code on one’s website — a relatively easy process. It’s even easier to accomplish, in fact, if you have a Placester website, as you don’t need to find the HTML in question from that setup guide. Rather, you just need to plop the code in your Placester Site Tracking section.

After you visit the page, head over to Ads Manager in your Facebook for Business dashboard. If, for some reason, your activity doesn’t pop up immediately, just wait, as it may take some time for your visit to populate.

Compare the success of normal and retargeted ads.

The entire process of starting your Facebook ads strategy, launching multiple campaigns over the course of several weeks, and seeing which ones help you meet your lead generation goals requires a bit of patience.

After all you likely won’t nail down your ad targeting filters right off the bat — you need to see which demographic details are most important for your targeting, which requires some experimentation on your end.

This means you can earn prospects who are further down the marketing funnel, as opposed to those who simply fit your criteria as a typical client (e.g. 40 years or older; stable income/savings; has family; wants to move from beginner home to bigger and better house; etc.).

Now, there is no consistency across the board with Facebook advertising and the Pixel regarding lead gen totals, as this will vary due to a number of factors like the industry in which a brand works and the types of prospect demographics they target.

As long as your website is fully optimized for search so you can get a significant amount of visitors organically, you can earn more traffic and, in turn, potentially earn more leads from visitors who don’t convert on your site but end up on Facebook in the near future.

Determine if you need help with your ads strategy.

This final step isn’t necessarily a final step for every agent with a real estate Facebook advertising and Pixel strategy.

If you gradually feel more comfortable running, analyzing, and modifying your ad campaigns and see better results over time, then well done!

If you feel a bit overwhelmed with this bonus marketing activity, then it’s time to turn to the pros. There are actual providers out there who are more than willing to help out REALTORS with their advertising efforts on the site. In fact, we know a really good Facebook ad services provider that helps lots of agents (and even brokers, too) with executing their campaigns — well, along with providing other tools and features to aid their online strategies too, of course.

Whoever you decide to employ to assist your Facebook-for-real-estate ad plans, you can rest assured knowing the experts are here to help — ones who have vast experience optimizing and re-optimizing campaigns to generate a steady stream of the right prospects for agents’ nationwide.

Register for an exclusive webinar to learn how to improve your real estate lead generation with Facebook.

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